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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoTom Dodge | DISPATCHArmy veteran Sean Clifton, 39, an analyst in the Columbus FBI office, was an intern before the FBI officially began a Wounded Warrior Internship Program.

‘I’m too old and beat up.”

A wry smile crossed Sean Clifton’s face at his blunt assessment of why he ditched his dream of
becoming an FBI agent and became an agency analyst instead.

But the former Army sergeant isn’t complaining. Working as an FBI analyst who helps to chase
down terrorists is the perfect job, he said.

Clifton, a 39-year-old Dublin resident, is one of 15 former service members who have become
full-time FBI employees through the Wounded Warrior Internship Program.

The program is an offshoot of Operation War-fighter, a Department of Defense
program that places wounded service members in internships with federal agencies during their
recovery. Clifton became familiar with the program in 2009 while at Walter Reed Medical Center in
Washington, D.C., where he was recovering from battle injuries involving his abdominal organs,
sciatic nerve, right leg and left wrist.

“I was never well enough to do (an internship in Washington), and then I came back
to Columbus to recover,” he said. At that time, Operation Warfighter offered internships
only in Washington, and the FBI program didn’t exist.

But Clifton, who was an assault-team leader for a special-forces team in
Afghanistan when he was injured during a raid, isn’t one to back away from something he wants. He
emailed FBI Special Agent Kevin Cornelius, whom he’d met five years earlier when he was considering
becoming an agent.

In 2010, Cornelius was an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Cincinnati
division, of which Columbus is a part. He remembered Clifton and embraced the idea of having
him work as an intern.

Clifton still was undergoing intensive physical therapy and surgeries for his
wounds, but in 2010 he began to work part time helping agents and shadowing analysts. Gradually, he
spent more time on the job, analyzing intelligence information for terrorist threats and helping
agents in investigations.

A year ago, he became a full-time analyst in the Columbus FBI office. Four months
later, the FBI officially began its Wounded Warrior internship program.

The work gives Clifton, who was in the Army for nearly 20 years, much more
than a paycheck.

“It put me back on a team and gave me a new mission,” he said.

“It really supported my physical recovery because it gave me a mental focus. Having
a job, a team, that next mission, provides hope.”

His wife, Sarah, has seen how the job has motivated him and helped him with the
often-difficult transition from soldier to civilian.

“He still has the purpose of fighting for his county; he just doesn’t have to do it
overseas,” she said. And he can go home at night to his wife and three sons.

Paul Toepfer, the supervisory intelligence analyst under whom Clifton works, said a
new employee with a spotless military record such as Clifton’s can be “trusted right off the
bat,” an important asset in the FBI.

“I can see how much his colleagues trust him,” Toepfer said. “He’s a self-starter
and is highly motivated. He’s one of the ones I’ve had to order to go home at night and not work on
his day off.”

Clifton hopes more wounded warriors will consider internships with the FBI or other
government agencies, just as he hopes that private businesses and more government offices will
provide similar opportunities.

An agency or company is “getting a professional patriot to help them out,” Clifton
said. And the military pays the soldier’s salary during the internship.

Despite his injuries, he said, he’s grateful for the way his life has turned out.
He has a challenging job he loves, his family is close by, and he has been embraced by
co-workers.